508 THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 



Location should be chosen suited to apple production. It was at one 

 time said that California apples lacked flavor. Such were grown in 

 warm valleys with irrigation. Later, growers got better results in pool 

 coast sections, and some varieties gradually worked into hilly sections 

 well suited to their needs, until experts have come to know such sections 

 as the home of the choicest apples. White Winter Pearmains, Rhode 

 Island Greenings, and Baldwins grown in our coast range hills equal or 

 excel in flavor any I have ever tasted grown elsewhere. Too frequently 

 such stock is marketed, to its very serious detriment, with other stock 

 lacking in flavor and color. 



The Gravenstein is a perfect apple at its best, but with bad growth 

 habits. We need a better behaved tree having a fruit as good, with a 

 longer season. 



The Bellflower, if immature or overmature, is poor. If grown under 

 suitable conditions, it is a perfect apple in its prime, which does not 

 permit too long a time in cold storage ; and so we might go on. But 

 what we wish to impress is this : Study your location and your market 

 demands, and then choose your variety or varieties intelligently, not 

 with the idea that ' ' apples are apples. ' ' 



Now we come to a consideration of the prime factor, the man behind 

 the orchard ! Here and there we find a man caring for his orchard on a 

 scientific basis. In the past his fellows had fortune thrust upon them ; 

 he earns his success and harvests far more than the average of two boxes 

 per tree. He has a personal interast in every tree ; his orchard is not 

 pruned by men whose only asset is physical strength. His apples are 

 picked by men who know signs of maturity and who can handle apples 

 carefully from the tree to the orchard storehouse, which might well 

 supplement, if not displace, commercial cold storage plants. In fact, 

 the orchardist who lives in his orchard is the one who will produce high 

 grade fruit for consumers capable of judging quality, and who demand 

 it. And having done this he will be in a position to join hands with 

 others of his kind to shape the success their labors deserve. 



It has been difficult to touch upon the apple outlook without a con- 

 sideration of features seemingly irrelevant; yet these are the hidden 

 things of importance, and lack of consideration of them heretofore has 

 brought the apple industry to its present precarious position ; these 

 things are to be seriously considered if the apple industry is to be 

 rescued from final destruction and placed upon a fair and honest basis. 



In conclusion, perhaps we shall not go too far afield in calling atten- 

 tion to the fact that the apple will come into its own when the children 

 of our rural schools shall have been trained to loving work in the 

 orchard. The love to plant and train the tree and to gather its fruit, 

 must be developed in our own sons and daughters if we are to have 

 intelligent helpers in our work, in place of ignorant hirelings. When 

 the education of every country child promotes him to his lawful inher- 

 itance in horticulture, then, and not until then, will the orchard possess 

 for him a charm, against which the glamour of the city can not prevail. 

 Then will its fruit, nurtured with care and marketed with intelligence, 

 take the high place which it merits and bring the financial return which 

 its producer deserves. 



